It’s not just business, it can be personal

There’s an immortal line in The Godfather: “It’s not personal . . . it’s
strictly business.” This sums up the attitude of capitalism and the
corporate world of recent decades, says Dov Seidman, author of How: Why How
We Do Anything Means Everything. But it’s an attitude that has no place in
the future of business, he says.

“Leaders were once able to convince people that there is such a thing as
separate spheres, that business is just business, or that politics is just
politics,” says Seidman, “but today, everything is fusing. Everything is
personal. We’re rising and falling together.”

One of the central tenets of Seidman’s book is that we now live in a world of
total interdependency. This means that we can no longer afford to think
about spheres as separate, or as existing independently of one another. “The
behaviour of one person can affect so many others so far away, in ways it
never could before,” he says

The implication is that business requires a new kind of leadership in this new
world, says Seidman. Gone are the days when sticks and carrots were the only
way to coerce certain behaviours from employees. Now chief executives need
to inspire employees to behave in a certain way.

Money is no longer the only motivating factor, says the author. “If it were
just about money, as soon as an employee was offered higher remuneration
elsewhere, they would leave,” Seidman explains. “There are other much more
powerful ways of inspiring people.”

This is why we need a new kind of leader, he says. “Leadership is still about
power and authority, but the source of the power and the authority is
shifting from authority: ‘do this because I’m the president’, to ‘let’s do
this because it’s right’.”

There are several ways to achieve this shift in mindset. It is not enough to
simply empower people, according to Seidman. In fact, this, ironically,
reinforces the hierarchical and dictatorial architecture, he says. “When you
say to someone ‘you’re empowered’, you’ve reinforced the culture of power.”

The way to influence staff to behave a certain way is not to coerce,
manipulate or nudge, says Seidman, but to inspire.

“Ironically, the most affordable, most renewable and most abundant form of
human energy is inspiration,” says Seidman. “What inspires us are purposes
that are meaningful to us: visions and missions worthy of our commitment and
values.”

This is why businesses of the future will need to start measuring the ‘how’
rather than the ‘how much’, says the author. “It’s how much GDP,
how much revenue, how much profit this quarter, how much market share, how
much debt can our balance sheet hold?” he asks. “In this new economy,
it’s also ‘how many’: how many followers of Facebook friends, or how many
subscribers.”

Seidman says this is the wrong metric. “What we measure is a window into what
we value, what we are projecting matters the most.” So, instead of measuring
how much, we should be measuring how things are done.

The theory is that this will result in a more values-driven business culture,
where companies become “too principled to fail, rather than too big to
fail”. After all, as Seidman points out, the “too big to fail” theory
has far from worked out in the real world. Loyalty and trust are at a
dangerously low ebb, says Seidman. “The virtue of trust lies in giving it
away, not inspecting for it.”

This can be implemented by becoming more trusting of employees to perform
tasks such as submitting their expenses, or even rating their own
performances. This approach has many benefits. An organisation based on
values and a shared sense of purpose will outlast one built on pure
capitalism and greed, argues Seidman.

But to embed long-lasting values, the organisation has to go beyond corporate
social responsibility and governance and compliance, says Seidman. “I
respect these approaches, because they are bridges and a point of focus,” he
says. “But what I am talking about is something a lot more fundamental.”